Old Kit, Slow Start - Safe?

I'm looking for some opinions about how safe my last brew is.

I found a Brewer's Best kit for Holiday Ale that is, I think, about 2 years old (stuffed in a cabinet behind all my brewing equipment). Of course, I wasn't just gonna throw it out - it would either be good or bad, right? That's a 50-50 shot at having more beer than I have now...

All the ingredients were sealed and smelled good while I was making it, but it took about 6 full days to start bubbling. I'm no expert, but I've done this many times before. I'm sure I sterilized everything well, and cooled the wort enough to pitch the yeast. It's a 5 gallon kit where you make a 2 1/2 gallon wort and add more water at the end of the boil. The water I added was tap water, so it wasn't boiled and/or sterilized. Also, I think it could be highly chlorinated since I've had trouble starting sourdough and with it.

So I think the delay was due to a combination of old yeast, chlorinated water, and possibly unsterilized water used to top it up. Since it still smells good to me, should I let it keep going, or is 6 day just too long to wait for the fermentation to start?

What do you mean by safe? As it will it hurt you or will it be quality beer? There is no way that it will hurt you there are no know pathogens (sp) that can survive in beer. It may not be the best beer ever with the older grains and hops and potentially poor water though generally with extract beers if the water you use tastes alright to drink it won't hurt the beer. My guess is you lag in fermentation was cause by old yeast but I would for sure still drink it.

My personal opinion is you wasted your time for a variety of reasons.

My personal opinion is that you paid for the kit. It will not be as good as if it was fresh. It will be safe. It will be beer. It would be a total waste to just toss the kit.

Good luck!

I always thought that if you didn't start reducing sugar content, increasing alcohol content, and eliminating oxygen in the wort, that other stuff would start growing instead of yeast and make the beer go bad.

I guess it would just taste bad rather than become unsafe?

Anyway, it's encouraging that other people on here would at least keep it brewing. It sounds like I can just base my decision to keep it on whether it tastes good enough to keep... kind of like all my other batches of beer, I guess. ;-)

brewmoore said:

I always thought that if you didn't start reducing sugar content, increasing alcohol content, and eliminating oxygen in the wort, that other stuff would start growing instead of yeast and make the beer go bad.

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But that's not the same thing as being harmful to you. Most of those other stuff that would start growing,like acetobactor, and lactobasilus, would still make "safe" beer. They may be funky tasting, but you would NOT be harmed by them. In fact many folks brew lambics and make malt vinegar on purpose.....

Well, after about 2 days of bubbling, it's starting to smell a little "different" - not sure if it qualifies as off, though, because the Holiday Ale has some grains in it that I've never used before. There's also still lots of CO2 coming off, so it can be hard to tell.

Has anyone every finished a kit that took this long to start? How did it turn out?

A lot depends on how well sanitized the wort was. At the start of fermentation it is a race between the yeast getting started and producing alcohol to protect the beer, and other organisms in the wort taking hold. In sanitizing everything, we reduce the number of other organisms, and pitch a large amount of yeast to give it a head start.

The only way to tell now, is to wait until fermentation is over, and take a sample and taste it. If it tastes fine, the yeast won and you got beer. If it tastes off, you have 5 gallons of drain cleaner.